


though the stars walk backward

by pseudofaux



Category: Samurai Love Ballad: PARTY
Genre: (and d), Depression, F/M, HEALED BY LOVE, Loneliness, Reincarnation, divine destiny epilogue, rewrite of the epilogue, set post-route
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-14 08:29:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17505140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pseudofaux/pseuds/pseudofaux
Summary: She's been having dreams of a marvelous palace and an even more marvelous man, and both vanish in flame and hurt. The pan lingers long past waking. Who wouldn't prefer dreams?Until reality, at last, becomes better than dreams.(title is from an e.e. cummings poem linked in the notes)





	though the stars walk backward

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meganstrawberryhat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meganstrawberryhat/gifts).



> A "thanks for being you" for the always kind, encouraging, wonderful M. Thanks for being you! Xoxo!
> 
> Title and a few themes in the story are from an e.e. cummings poem that I saw recently and was like DAMN, that is Shingen's MC before they meet again, about a bajillion percent. You can (and should!) read it [here](http://www.slow-words.com/dive-for-dreams/) (or anywhere!).

_I saw the garden in my dreams again, and again it was overtaken by flames. I did not stay, in my dream, to watch the fire reduce every beautiful green thing to char. I had dreamed enough to know the desolation of the place when everything but the rocks and sand were ruined._

I got up and got ready for work.

_I daydreamed a man touching my back. His low laugh was sensual but sweet, and if I just opened my eyes above my smile and turned, he would kiss me--_  
  
Someone slapped more papers on my desk, startling me out of my imagination. There was a huff of laughter; the enemy of sweetness. I couldn’t be offended. I felt the same disdain for myself. I tried to focus.  
  
_But I daydreamed I was asleep in the arms of a man who loved me and wanted me to be happy. So much that he would sacrifice everything.  
_

I dressed up and I went to a wine bar with friends that were worried for me. They were only kind and only offered kindness, and I only appreciated it-- and I only wanted to go home and stay there. To snuggle beneath my covers and close my eyes to imagine _strength_ as I had never actually experienced it, a man’s hip more glorious than any model’s, the gentleness of a giant who could snap me like a matchstick. I only wanted to see that, breathe the comfortable privacy of my pillow, and touch myself until I fell back asleep to dream of a beautiful garden that burned.

I stayed and I danced with my friends, and I tried to dance with a man, and then I tried to stay longer but I just... couldn’t. Home was a lure I could not deny. I had slipped the hook between my ribs myself, the thinness of it and its little needle pain belying how strongly it would lodge. You don’t usually recognize something as a forever, at the start.

_I dreamed he said my name, some grit adding character to his otherwise unnaturally smooth voice. That he even knew my name, my secret, was frightening and wonderful. He laughed again. It was so throaty and masculine I was shocked into wakefulness._

I couldn’t go back to sleep after that. I sat on my sofa and stared at the darkness of the world through my sliding glass doors.

I kept working-- though not well-- and I kept living-- though only to dive for dreams. The dreams got more intense, which was fine with me. By that point I needed to feel, and so little that I was able to make myself try brought me any feeling at all.  
  
When he found me in the waking world, I was a wisp of myself. I was almost certainly going to be fired, I’d let my phone die. A gentle man-- I could tell he was gentle-- had tried to ask after me a few times on the way home from work and I only remembered hours later to hope I’d managed a smile as I brushed him off.  
  
But then _he_ hauled me up so strong and fast it was like he’d fished me out of the darkness of the ocean, and all the colors I could see from that hill were dazzling-- stars come down to dance, hovering still and heavy, waiting to move forward.

Waiting.

Was it really him? The red of his hair called to my hands and I was too far gone to keep myself from touching it.  
  
“You,” I said. “This... was it longer?” It was confusing to see him in front of me, sharp in modern clothes. The way he looked in my dreams, naked or in traditional clothing, blurred in front of him. Fog and memory made me dizzy.  
  
“It was,” he said. He chuckled. That was exactly like I remembered. Haziness was banished as though the sun were full above us, as though we were not in the dimness of the beginning of night. In the dreaming time.  
  
The hook in my ribs lost all its slack and pulled sharp, the barb of it nicking my rawness, notching into my bones.  
  
“Where have you been?” I should have felt triumphant at this validation of my dreams and my faith. He was real. And he was here. But my heart hurt worse than ever, and my voice cracked and the question was a demand. Because he’d made me feel again the wet burn of my tears _hurt_.

His expression of bewildered concern made my lip quiver until the first sob pushed it open.  
  
“Looking for you, of course” he murmured, touching my hair, too, and the splotch on my neck, hot under makeup. “You were hard to find.”

It was a lover’s chastisement, amused and kind, and it broke me so open the hook slipped free, lost to the seabed of forever. The solidity of him holding me was real. His scent. His murmurs.

...My tears and snot. Slippery and dangerous as glass was the realization I had not cried in a very long time.  
  
When I calmed, the quiet man who had tried to make sure I was okay days ago ushered us into a car, and took us home. Of course. He had looked out for both of us as best he could.

That first night, I did not sleep. As Harunobu pushed into my body, fitting too far and just as God had designed him to, the stars began their first steps. Their walk was a dance so beautiful I could see it behind my closed eyelids as I cried his name and pressed my nails into health of his shoulders, holding on as he put me back together.  
  
Every night from then on, the stars moved forward. There were no more hooks, only linked fingers. And, occasionally, my wrists tied together with the robe of his belt, a rich rope of silk threads that shone crimson as the blood he never coughed.

We had a rooftop garden that lasted our entire lives, and the only flames that ever visited that space were to launch fireworks, to the delight of our friends and our children. My dreams were rarer once he found me, but they were free of dread. I woke from each one secure in the arms of a man that loved me and kept me happy.

**Author's Note:**

> M's blog is so worth a follow for upbeat thirst commentary, fic appreciation, and general ADORBS: [all-my-cuffs-have-buttons, on tumblr](http://all-my-cuffs-have-buttons.tumblr.com/).


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